So, anyway, what was the point of this thread?
It wasn't exactly news.
It wasn't exactly news.
Elite Dangerous is not a Game you own, its a Service
- Thread starter DoppelGanger
- Start date
To some it seems to have been.
Sorry to say this, you have probably never "owned" any software unless you wrote it yourself. Any game you bought was a copy of compiled code that you were licenced to load into your PC, this is the way it always worked from a legal perspective anyway. Doesn't matter if it's stored on an Atari 2600 cartridge or your hard drive, it's a propriety agreement of use - not yours to "own" as your own IP. Even if it's open source.
Meanwhile, the entire industry has slipped quietly into the GAS model - not just Frontier, good luck finding boxed offline new PC games. Even the ones that appear to be "offline" will probably need an internet connection for the latest "updates" and new "content" consumers now demand following their initial "ten quid in a steam sale" purchase as these forums prove.
The world has changed, but since PC gamers have been happily signing over their consumer rights in favour of early access/crowd funded/pre-alpha-alpha "er it's an alpha so don't expect reviews" for almost a decade, you are simply shouting into the wind.
Meanwhile, the entire industry has slipped quietly into the GAS model - not just Frontier, good luck finding boxed offline new PC games. Even the ones that appear to be "offline" will probably need an internet connection for the latest "updates" and new "content" consumers now demand following their initial "ten quid in a steam sale" purchase as these forums prove.
The world has changed, but since PC gamers have been happily signing over their consumer rights in favour of early access/crowd funded/pre-alpha-alpha "er it's an alpha so don't expect reviews" for almost a decade, you are simply shouting into the wind.
I should get used to paying for GaaS which I don't enjoy playing?
@ZeeWolf Your argument has been debunked in OP's video.
Which bit? (to save me watching a one hour video)
Edit: presumably the bit about "ownership"? I watched some more of the video. It's good, but he doesn't have any concrete evidence to prove his points either. Sure you own your game as much as "fair use" allows but I think a consumer would have trouble arguing that they bought the game which entitled them as "owner" to do something like burn it onto DVDs and sell it down the pub in some new "custom" made box with their own name emblazoned as owner and author - which is what I was getting at.
As for GaaS and SaaS I'm no more a fan than anyone else, the same thing has happened to software like Adobe and Office. One minute I was happily re-installing my copy of Office XP on different computers I owned, which was more than enough to update my CV or open the odd .doc file here and there, the next minute I'm tied into Office 365 and paying an annual subscription to stop Microsoft from locking me out of the software completely
My only point, really, is that everything got this way because consumers demand it and on the other hand they seem to have pre-conceptions about their relationship with a games developer, especially on large open world online games. They want a constant stream of shiny shiny! I'd imagine if Frontier turned around and said "fine we'll make ED offline but the cost is that we won't produce any more new content for that version, we'll work on a sequel instead so we can make some money and continue to pay our developers" there'd be outrage. But just a few years ago that was the standard model.
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Its been said many times on the forums here over the years. But it is a problem many players will have with this and other games. We're all just leasing, perhaps, who knows.
I think if it becomes unprofitable, they may let it go so others can take over private or public servers somehow. Not sure and don't really care.
I think if it becomes unprofitable, they may let it go so others can take over private or public servers somehow. Not sure and don't really care.
oh yes, i very much owned the copy, and still do. physically and legally. in my country it is even still legal for me to make copies of that copy, e.g., for backup purposes or ... (wait for it) lend it to a friend for him to use it, as long as i do it for free. because i purchased the copy and it's mine. publisher's opinion or licensing terms on this are irrelevant, won't mean squat in any court case (or shouldn't). there is a whole agency managing the collection of a canon on every ip related item sold for the sole purpose of compensating publishers specifically for this. (in practice it is just another corrupt rip off, but that's beside the point and doesn't invalidate my right to copy, nor my ownership).
and of course second hand market is still a thing besides industry lobbies twisting legality trying to eradicate it.
yeah, that seems very much so.
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Somebody probably said it at this point but I can't be bothered to read another one of "these" threads.
No piece of software you buy, nowadays, is "yours" unless it's an open-source code. It's not a car or any other stupid comparison people are using.
It doesn't matter if it's a "game as service" or a game on DVD, online or offline. You are only buying rights to use it.
I have dozens of old games I can't play any more because license ran out or something else.
No piece of software you buy, nowadays, is "yours" unless it's an open-source code. It's not a car or any other stupid comparison people are using.
It doesn't matter if it's a "game as service" or a game on DVD, online or offline. You are only buying rights to use it.
I have dozens of old games I can't play any more because license ran out or something else.
It's not that bad really. The scale of the cloud operation Frontier manages is due to the fact that there are tens of thousands of player clients connecting simultaneously - using comms, fetching data and sending updates for missions, USSes, station transactions, etc. Assuming you had access to suitable server software, the infrastructure to support a single-player universe would probably fit on a modern gaming machine just fine. That said, if there was a post-Frontier community server project, it would probably be simpler to set it up once in the cloud and support a shared universe. Contra what some have said, the fact that it uses AWS makes things simpler, not harder, because AWS is a standard and well-understood cloud platform. It would be worse for everyone if Frontier had rolled their own proprietary infrastructure.
Yep, relatively unlikely they would release the source to the engine until so long after the fact that it's only of historical, rather than playable, interest. There's an outside chance that they could release parts, if they decided to do like some other companies have done and try to license their engine more broadly -- think Unity or Unreal Engine -- but I've never seen anything to suggest Frontier is interested in that.
However, consider what the communities have done with other server-based games post-EOL. Typically the backend is about managing shared state, mediating interactions, recording transactions -- not graphics -- and open source efforts have had some successes building replacement backends for those kinds of games, especially if the IP owner isn't outright hostile to the effort. Probably the best-case scenario would be that, when Elite goes EOL, Frontier releases either the backed source code, or even just the docs for the communication protocols used between the client and the backend and blesses a community effort to build a compatible version. And maybe gives a distributor like GOG permission to distribute client patches to point existing clients to the community servers.
The crucial distinction is that you own the copy. You never owned the software. For instance, you don't have the right to make new copies for others to use, nor to modify the software. Unless it's Free/Open Source software, in which case those rights travel with the license.
I actually disagree. The service model is more honest. The reason software companies long had crazy profit margins is that they could make a product once and sell infinite copies at essentially zero marginal cost. This creates terrible incentives - to skimp on development vs marketing, to skip planning for ongoing maintenance, to push "upgrades" that break old versions, to ignore efficient use of the customer's resources (memory, CPU, time, etc). By contrast, with a service model it's quite clear how the developers get paid on an ongoing basis, and there is proper incentive to keep the customer satisfied and the product working over time. And it couples well with the cloud model, where the service provider rather than the customer is responsible for managing the cost and complexity of maintaining the hardware and software.
And as I said above, you never actually owned the software anyway. If you wanted that, open source was always the only answer.
Yes Elite Dangerous is no ones SLAVE.
So standard practice for digital products then.
http://www.technologyguide.com/feature/you-dont-own-your-amazon-kindle-ebooks/
If the Servers went offline permanently I would be sad but would just load up Oolite and jump in my Cobra again
Well... damn.
No, you should get used to the idea that more and more games (and apps) will be delivered as a service. Your enjoyment of them is separate.... if you can't enjoy games because they are GaaS, then you're going to be out of luck.
Oh jeez, thanks for the advice, I was planning on enjoying the game today, tomorrow.